Information is provided on South Carolina's Project SEARCH, which is designed to identify and serve potentially gifted rural African American children in the regular classroom. Nontraditional measures of giftedness, teacher development initiatives, instructional material selection, strengthening collaboration, and problems encountered are…

Maintains that inclusion, mainstreaming, and other issues associated with special education are becoming part of music education. Asserts that music teachers have a responsibility to develop the music potential of all students. Describes classroom techniques for meeting the individual needs of special students. (CFR)

Articles in this special section describe programs and techniques for integrating children with special needs into the child care community, using correct terminology about disabilities, parenting special needs children, serving parents of children with differing abilities by eliciting the help of professionals, and helping teachers understand…

Evaluation of a schoolwide enrichment and resource room enrichment program on problem solving/problem finding for gifted children in grades 3-5 found that the gifted students involved made significantly greater gains than did average ability students receiving the special treatment and significantly greater gains than did gifted students receiving…

Evaluated effects of procedure to teach appropriate social responses to adolescents with severe disabilities by employing ABA withdrawal design, replicated twice with two students, and AB design with third student. Results showed increases in correct responding and decreases in echolalia following intervention. Generalization of appropriate…

Describes Korea's Camp Gonee for mainstreaming disabled children, based on American continuum-of-services approach to therapeutic recreation. Describes camp's systematic design, planning, objectives, program development, and volunteer training. Describes campers' experiences, progress, and relationships with volunteers. Discusses implications of…

Returning mildly mentally handicapped students to regular classrooms is not the least restrictive or most appropriate program. These students require a slower paced curriculum, more social behavior remediation, and a smaller pupil/teacher ratio than regular classrooms offer. Mainstreaming may lead to a higher dropout rate and subsequent need for…

This study of 33 mainstreamed students with mild disabilities in grades 3-9 found significant correlations between classroom behaviors and final grades in all areas except attendance and homework at the elementary level and written work at the junior high level. Significant differences in reading scores were found between mainstreamed and regular…

This survey of 125 parents and 95 teachers of typically developing children found that respondents perceived important benefits accruing to these children because of their involvement in preschool and kindergarten classes with students with disabilities. The specific nature of benefits centered on changes in social cognition, prosocial personal…

Full inclusion is a confusing topic. Many people misunderstand the "least restrictive environment" provision of the federal Individuals with Disabilities Education Act. Districts need not educate every disabled child in a regular classroom for the entire day, but have numerous options, so long as each child is carefully evaluated. Recent…

During inclusion discussions, board members must remember their goal--ensuring that schools meet the needs of all students, including those with disabilities. Boards should ask themselves how they decide where to educate disabled students, how other diverse populations are taught, what training is provided to help teachers address diverse needs,…

Perceptions of mainstreamed students with learning disabilities (n=60) regarding adaptations (e.g., altering tests, homework, assignments, instruction) made by general education teachers were compared with perceptions of low achieving (n=59) and average/high achieving (n=60) students. Differences were found in relation to elementary versus…

This article presents an approach to cooperative planning for individualizing instruction of students with special needs in mainstream settings. Guidelines for making decisions about aspects of joint lesson plans and a Co-Teaching Planning Form are offered. (DB)

A national survey of 483 preschool personnel revealed that paraprofessionals were hired in high proportions across all program types and more frequently in mainstreamed than nonmainstreamed programs. The lowest levels of paraprofessional employment occurred for public school kindergartens. Nearly three-fourths of the mainstreamed programs did not…

Describes an assistant professor's experience teaching two eighth-grade classes: a self-contained group of students with learning and emotional disabilities and an English/social studies class that mainstreamed disabled students and used a team-teaching approach. Advocates "pull-ins," or putting children into special programs and…